Security
skimming devices are often unnoticed by the customer and will capture all the user’s credit or debit card details. For that reason, passengers are becoming increasingly conscious of mounting privacy concerns when travelling.
Electronic ticketing vulnerable Electronic ticketing itself has suffered serious setbacks as RFID- based mechanisms (radio frequency identification) have been shown to be vulnerable to eavesdropping, and employing encryption is not effective. In 2008 researchers at Radboud University in Holland managed to crack the encryption on an Oyster card, clone it, add credit to it and take free rides on the London underground. The concern is that the only equipment needed to achieve this was a laptop and an RFID reader to eavesdrop on the communication between a card and a card reader.
Signaling infrastructure violated More serious, but less frequent, cyber crime attacks have targeted signaling infrastructure. The exposure of onboard sensors, and control and signaling infrastructure may lead to safety violations. This was seen in a case in Lodz, Poland where a 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points. The teenager broke into a number of tram depots to gather the information needed to build the device which turned the tram system in Lodz into his own personal train set. As a result four vehicles were derailed injuring twelve people.
The notion of cyber crime is changing in terms of means, motive and opportunities from large-scale cyber
attacks targeting major installations, to smaller commonly re-occurring incidents that originate from more independent sources from individuals to semi- organised groups. This type of crime typically would include trespass, identity theft, financial scams and fraud, extortion and industrial espionage, or operational disruption. Attacks of this kind on critical infrastructures rose to the top of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime in 2001.
Building more secure systems There are some fundamental design and engineering principles that could help build more secure systems that are resilient and operationally safe in the face of deliberate and persistent attacks. The most fundamental tenets of security are confidentiality, integrity and availability. Confidentiality refers to the prevention of unauthorised disclosure of relevant information; understanding that any piece of information is designed to be accessed only by an authorised system, component or user. Integrity is a similar concept except that it refers to the prevention of unauthorised modification. Availability is slightly different in that it refers to the accessibility of data by authorised components or users to ensure operational liveness. Another, equally important, principal is authentication which refers to the verification of an identity against the claimed identity. This is increasingly important in a world where multiple independent systems communicate with each other accessing information and influencing the state of the wider system. This notion is related to access control, the design of which is fundamental
‘Finally, another fundamental principle is to do with the separation of concerns in systems that are designed to perform a variety of functions’
to any secure system. Classical access control would mandate two important properties of systems with multi-level security: 1) no component is able to access information classified at a higher level of security, and 2) no component at a higher level of security is able to leak any information to those who are assigned a lower level of security. This is important when designing information sharing in passenger journey or ticketing and payment systems. Finally, another fundamental principle is to do with separation of concerns in systems that are designed to perform a variety of functions. This is to do with compartmentalisation of design such that a part of the system only accesses information to do with the function it is designed to perform. Ultimately, all parts remain distinctively independent. This is particularly relevant to signaling and control systems where different operations could be refined to individual components, providing better maintainability and lower risk of cross- component manipulation.
Cyber security brings higher return Cyber security will be one of the future challenges to the railway infrastructure. As digital technologies are adopted and begin to play a more significant role in every aspect of rail operation, countering threats will become significantly more important.
Ensuring effective design principles would allow for security of data and availability of all critical processes as needed for rail performance and service delivery. The transition to a more digital railway would be costly. Investment in cyber security, however, both at the design level and operational level, promises a higher return in terms of better system reliability and infrastructure resilience.
Dr. Siraj Ahmed Shaikh is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry university. Siraj also leads a Digital Security and Forensics (SaFe) research group at the university, which is involved in research and development of security and safety for critical infrastructure including road and rail transport.
May 2013 Page 67
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124